Archives for March 2011

Zoe Keating is inspirational – not only does she make beautiful, fascinating music, seamlessly blending acoustic performance and electronica; but she has managed to build a career as an independent artist solely by using the internet to connect with her fans.

Her latest album, “Into The Trees“, reached the Top 10 of the Billboard classical chart, purely through sales from Bandcamp, and her fans love her music so much that some chose to pay $100 for her last album.

Like Imogen Heap, she is successful not only because she is fearsomely talented, but also because she naturally and enthusiastically embraces the connection possibilities offered by social media and the internet.

Enjoy !

BTW I strongly recommend you click through to watch this on YouTube, where it’s available in 720p HD, if your connection will handle it.

Interestingly, this video was shot and produced by Intel. As Zoe says:

“So far everyone I’ve met at Intel has been genuinely interested in and supportive of the arts. So if they want to highlight that support with their campaign, I think its a rare example of corporate intent and artistic purpose dovetailing. I’m ok with it. Its beautifully done and I think they captured me and my artistic life extremely well”

Buy any sound engineer a bottle of beer and ask him what he thinks of the Loudness War, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a half-hour rant about how much he hates it, how terrible it makes everything sound, and how his pristine recordings are constantly being destroyed by limiter-happy mastering engineers.

But when you say “Great ! I’m doing this thing called Dynamic Range Day, would you like to be listed as a supporter ?” – suddenly all you get is wide eyes, muttered excuses and un-returned emails.

One of the most common pieces of advice I give people is to include some real instruments in their mix. This documentary about multi-instrumentalist Dominik Johnson proves the point perfectly. Just listen to all those beautiful textures, the unique space and character of the different recordings, the superb performances – this, folks is how it’s done.

But not all of us are lucky enough to be able to play so many instruments – I count myself lucky that I can play just one ! That doesn’t mean you can’t get some of this flavour into your recordings, though.

Want some real strings in your mix ? Talk to Pete Whitfield at Real Strings. For bass I can recommend the one and only Sigurdór Guðmundsson. How about a virtuoso harmonica player ?!? That would be Steve Lockwood. You can even have a full orchestra, using a company like Tadlow Music, if the budget will stretch to it. Check this wiki for more ideas !

My point is, the internet makes all of these options a possibility for anyone’s music – and perhaps most importantly, you get a superb musician and their performance into the bargain. There are even companies who specialise in creating entire arrangements from your demos.

And if you don’t have any kind of budget for this kind of thing – record things yourself ! Maybe you know a friendly amateur violinist or cellist. Just adding one real instrument into a string pad mix can transform it. Or play some percussion – instruments like shakers and tambourines are very affordable – you can even make your own. Having small, real details like this can bring an otherwise sequenced and sampled backing to life, adding a crucial human element, and some of the atmosphere that only real space can bring.

That bears repeating – crushed, hyper-compressed “loudness war” style music sounds even more limp and distorted on the radio – and no louder than anything else.

I still get the feeling that people don’t believe me, though – and especially, I don’t think they believe how extreme the radio processing is.

So, when I was clearing out some old backups and found the files I’ve posted below – the ones that originally that proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that loudness means nothing on the radio – I decided it was time to let you hear them, too.